My name is Kurtis Keele, and I’ve been a garden leader at Lowell Street Community Garden for about 15 years, and have lived in the neighborhood for more than 25. I started working in the community garden to get involved with my neighbors. Especially in those first years, I was at the garden constantly. A lot of folks thought that I lived there! Nearly all of our gardeners got involved because we got talking when they passed by. It’s nice, because the garden has become a real social place. Old folks, kids, we all hang out there. It used to be that I would know folks on my block, but now I can meet people who are from all over the neighborhood.
My favorite thing about the garden, though, is that it taught me how to eat vegetables. I grew up in a suburban low-income family, and we didn’t eat that many fruits and vegetables, mostly stuff like meat and bread. Now I eat collards! I never even heard of collards before I started going to the community garden. And I love green beans. I love the way they grow, pole beans. I plant them everywhere, covering up the fences and walkways. I like to grow things that aren’t that common too, to show the neighborhood the different kinds of food you can grow.
And now, right across the street, we have Barnum Orchard, where we grow fruit trees. The garden doesn’t take as much hands-on time any more, except for when we’re planting or cleaning things up, but the orchard is a lot more work now. It just opened this year, but we’re hoping that it will be able to give everyone in the community a source of fruit: apples, peaches, plums.
I can’t imagine what my life would look like without our garden and orchard. I’ve done a lot of the DUG training programs too, the Master Composter and Master Community Gardener programs. I learn so much from our gardeners–I know very little about almost everything, but it’s never too late to learn.
